If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in linguistics & comparative literature, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #77 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 19 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for linguistics & comparative literature students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,046 bachelor's degrees in linguistics & comparative literature during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Linguistics & Comparative Literature School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The comparative literature bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality comparative literature program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to linguistics & comparative literature students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of linguistics & comparative literature students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for linguistics & comparative literature to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized linguistics & comparative literature related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for linguistics & comparative literature students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Linguistics & Comparative Literature Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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University of California - Los Angeles is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in linguistics & comparative literature. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the linguistics & comparative literature degree program at University of California - Los Angeles earn $6,222 more than the average graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
It is difficult to beat University of California - Santa Barbara if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in linguistics & comparative literature. Located in the suburb of Santa Barbara, UCSB is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the linguistics & comparative literature program at University of California - Santa Barbara make $3,327 more than the standard college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
University of California - Santa Cruz is a wonderful option for students interested in a bachelor's degree in linguistics & comparative literature. UC Santa Cruz is a large public university located in the city of Santa Cruz.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the comparative literature program state that they receive average early career earnings of $21,793.
Rankings in Majors Related to Comparative Literature
One of 18 majors within the Foreign Languages & Linguistics area of study, Linguistics & Comparative Literature has other similar majors worth exploring.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The comparative literature bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality comparative literature program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
